At Venice Biennale, Artists Plant Flag for Their State (of Mind)

The artist Leif Elggren surveying his self-declared domain, Isola San Michele, Venices most famous cemetery.Credit
Librado Romero/The New York Times

VENICE, June 8 — From Albania to Venezuela, there are officially 77 countries taking part in this year’s Venice Biennale, shipping in crates of their most eye-catching art. But unbeknownst to most of the thronging crowds, there is a 78th nation involved (a kingdom, to be precise), one that does not show up on any of the lists. It has no pavilion and will give no lavish party. It isn’t even showing any art to speak of. And if you look on a map of the world, you will not find it, exactly.

It bears the unwieldy name of the Kingdoms of Elgaland-Vargaland, and they exist primarily in the minds of two dour, funny middle-aged artists from Stockholm, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Leif Elggren, who felt that it was kind of silly that their country still had a king.

So silly, in fact, that in 1992 they decided to declare themselves kings of their own country, one made up completely of the borders between other countries: the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea; the blue line between Lebanon and Israel; the porous line between Mexico and the United States.

In many cases their vast, far-flung territories can be measured only in conceptual terms, just as thousands of infinitesimal, invisible lines exist only on maps and in international law. Wherever borders are disputed, the lands of Elgaland-Vargaland can be measured in actual miles: its land, in other words, is no man’s land, the places that don’t quite belong to anyone.

Mr. von Hausswolff, 51, and Mr. Elggren, 56, have been official representatives of Sweden at previous Biennales, but this year they decided, they said, to do something “Off Off Broadway.” They flew here this week to announce that they had officially — with no official power, of course — annexed a literal no-man’s land, the Isola San Michele, Venice’s island of the dead and most famous cemetery, established by Napoleon.

“From the beginning of our republic,” Mr. Elggren said, “we had it in our minds that everyone who is dead is automatically a citizen of Elgaland-Vargaland. And if any of them didn’t want to be, they could file a complaint, and we would remove them from the list.”

Mr. von Hausswolff, lighting a Marlboro yesterday as he and Mr. Elggren prepared to meet a boat that would take them to survey their newest territory, added, “So far no one has complained.”

For 15 years now, attended to sporadically between other art projects, Elgaland-Vargaland (formed from variants of the two men’s names) has existed as a quirky but intellectually involved commentary on nationalism, citizenship, statehood and political power, mocking many of the functions of government. The artists print stamps and issue passports to anyone who wants one; they say they now have about 850 citizens, many of them fellow artists.

Photo

A section of the columbarium at Isola San Michele, Venice’s cemetery island established by Napoleon.Credit
Photographs by Librado Romero/The New York Times

They have “established” embassies in about 20 places around the world and give their ambassadors wide latitude to do basically anything they want in the name of the kingdom. (One in France recently annexed the “distance between high tide and low tide,” Mr. Elggren said.) They have also claimed possession of some mental states, like the one just between sleeping and waking.

By coming to Venice, they are using their floating nation to poke a little fun at the art world, especially the Biennale, with its Old World traditions of national pavilions and prideful competition and the new-world development of multinational corporate sponsorship.

On Friday morning the two artists rendezvoused with a friend, a young Venetian architect named Michele Brunello, who was enthusiastic about the cemetery idea and, more important, had a motorboat. (Mr. Brunello noted that almost everyone in Venice has a boat now. “The only problem is the parking,” he said.)

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Under a gorgeous sunny sky, the three, along with a press contingent of two who were invited along to record the moment, sped north of Venice toward the island, where cypress trees tower over the imposing high brick walls.

Neither Mr. Elggren nor Mr. von Hausswolff knew quite what to do as far as annexing went, besides taking pictures and videotaping their new lands from the water. Truth be told, at least on the island’s south side, there was not a lot to see, besides a tiny blue abandoned boat on the shore, which Mr. Brunello identified as a Venetian “sandalo — kind of a gondola for poor people.”

After a near circumnavigation, the royal party made landfall at a public vaporetto stop and forged into the island’s interior, along with a funeral party and a group of tourists who included a young American woman dressed all in black under a black lace parasol. The artists quickly located some of their most famous new citizens, like Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky, whose grave was decorated with flowers and pebbles. Ezra Pound, whose grave proved more difficult to find, was also notified of the annexation.

Mr. Elggren, walking around the crumbling tombs with his video camera, noted the resemblance between the ostentatious family tombs, with their engraved pediments, and many of the older pavilions at the Giardini, where much of the Biennale takes place.

“Except I like these pavilions much better,” he said.

In lieu of a handing-over ceremony, the two kings of an enlarged Elgaland-Vargaland simply enjoyed an impromptu lunch, with good Parmesan cheese, olives, salami and wine brought out to the island by Mr. von Hausswolff’s wife and a few friends.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B7 of the New York edition with the headline: At Venice Biennale, Artists Plant Flag for Their State (of Mind). Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe